"The Aztecs sacrificed as hard as we work." Georges Bataille

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"According to the handicap hypothesis, the males with the most striking colors have a good chance with the females simply because they are still alive." Axel Buether

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"Judo helps us to understand that worry is a waste of energy." Jigoro Kano

Glas Hidding Place

Fornication — a word that smells of urinary stones, orphanages, and juvenile detention. The word breathes in Nana. She wants to commit something forbidden — how is that even possible in a secular society? On the second day of their shared madness, Nana suggests the most picturesque room in the dead wing of the university as the setting for a decisive moment: the detention cell, the German Karzer.

“Karzer was the name given to detention cells in German universities in which, until the beginning of the 20th century, offenses were punished within the framework of the universities’ own academic jurisdiction.” (Wikipedia)

She does this via text message to increase the tension. She imagines Cornelius reading her proposal, and the thought triggers something that makes her add: she wants to be moved on something she can consider an altar.

The wording reflects Nana’s desire to be guided — a motif already discussed elsewhere. As a follower, she seeks direction in order to demonstrate it in return. “I want to be moved.” These few words are enough for a bilateral experience. They fulfill Cornelius’s wish to gain control over Nana and to put a tangible end to her performances.

Nana provokes Cornelius. She wants him to come out of his shell, to let go, to make himself vulnerable. She longs for words of desire, for a moment of irreversibility. Nana enjoys the despair she has conjured. He must not feel safe. Safety would allow him to slack off. Instead, he should double his efforts. In short, Nana challenges Cornelius like a trainer, keeping him at his limits. Yet he still slows down. Something is wrong in this charged relationship. Nana does not yet know what it is, but she senses a one-sidedness, a loss of balance.

Sexuality and Secrets

When Marcel Proust’s Baron Charlus encounters someone with the unpleasant familiarity of a godless, gossipy churchgoer, the nobleman always yields before the wretch has finished reading his embarrassing interpretation at Charlus’s expense. “If I were a bachelor, I would…” one of them says.

“You certainly know better than I how to tease a few sailors.”

Charlus reacts allergically to allusions of such indecency. Didier Eribon notes, curiously: “The Baron can believe that he is revealing nothing about his vice, while his secret is known to everyone and exposes him to the sarcasm of society.”

Charlus feels protected by his discretion. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick speaks of a “glass hiding place” and characterizes the scholarship as a whole as a “spectacle of hiding.” The work deals with the permanent inferiority through which Charlus represents his creator Proust and all other gay men.

Cornelius also believes he inhabits a glass hiding place. Nana could expose him at any time, while he has nothing with which to secure his position. Her adventurousness is a guaranteed safeguard: whatever she does is acceptable — it is framed as empowerment.

Nana in a Manifested Space

While she is thinking about how best to bring Cornelius into line, her inner drive agitates her once more. She retreats to a musty, dusty room in the dead wing of the castle-like college. Nana jams the door handle with a chair. Others had ideas before her in this refuge. Canned food is rotting; a torn-open fish tin reeks. Fungus in the walls releases fumes; mold spreads in every corner. A half-blind mirror leans against a wall. Nana thinks of a line by Joyce — “the cracked lookingglass of a servant” — which the poet saw as the signature of his homeland, Ireland.

Insect mummies lie in spider webs. Nana discovers woven sarcophagi, works of art created by nature. She leans against an antique desk. She forbids herself any immediate action and instead strives for complete manifestation. For the first time, she succeeds. Nana experiences a breakthrough in this junk room. She is no longer merely playing with a thought. She is no longer merely giving space to imagination. The thought creates a second reality in which the subject believes everything humanly possible can be experienced.

The manifested space resembles the real one. Here Nana can allow Cornelius as she needs him: as a projection, as a controllable figure. Everything is coherent, manageable, consistent. Nana reaches a state of intense fulfillment without any release of tension. What reality could compete with such omnipotence?